Big day for the crypto industry.
The Clarity Act advancing out of the Senate Banking Committee.
And here to break it down is Jess Houlgrave, CEO of Wallet Connect.
Jess, great to have you with us today.
Thank you for having me.
It's really great to be here.
Jess, let's get straight to it.
Wallet Connect released the stablecoin and Crypto Payments 2026 report.
Expand on some of those key findings.
The most interesting thing for me that stood out from this report were two facts that sit alongside each other.
One was that 96% of end users who hold crypto actually want to pay with with them.
The second one, which kind of counters that, is that 76% of those who have tried to make a payment in the last six months have had some difficulty and have abandoned that transaction.
And what that tells me is that we still have a lot of work to do on the infrastructure that is going to make crypto payments real and easy to use.
Despite that, despite some of those user experience frictions, the growth in stablecoin volumes continues to go through the roof, and I think we're going to see a lot of progress this year.
So Jess, take us through Wallet Connect and why you say stablecoins have surged, but reality lags.
So at Wallet Connect we are the infrastructure layer that allows apps and wallets to communicate with each other.
In this instance, we're talking about payments companies as an application and the ability for an end user of any wallet to make payments with the assets that they have in that wallet.
Interest is growing.
The Clarity Act obviously is a huge driver for that given.
A lot of confidence to the industry and to specifically traditional financial players that this technology is here to stay.
But despite that, the user experience is still sometimes challenging.
I think there's a little bit of a gap between what consumers are used to with a Web 2 payment, i.e., I can just take my phone and tap it, or I take my card and tap it.
And the experience that to date that we've seen in crypto where end users need to manage fragmentation across chains, different assets, managing things like gas fees, which are obviously a huge inconvenience, that's something that we've been working on closely with partners. like Ingenico to make sure it's really easy for a merchant to accept crypto and that the experience that an end user gets is much closer to Web 2.
I, I can just take my crypto wallet, whatever that is, tap it at the point of sale, and make a payment.
And take us through the use of stablecoins.
How are they enabling payments and who is accepting?
So the acceptance side is really interesting, and we are seeing demands from all sorts of different merchants all over the world.
In emerging markets, the use case tends to be the more everyday payment.
Here, a lot of individuals are holding stablecoins, often US dollar denominated stablecoins, perhaps to hedge against the inflation of their local currency, and they want to be able to pay for things like their regular coffee. restaurants, shopping, e-commerce.
On the other hand, in developed markets we see maybe a slightly different use case where we're seeing a lot of demand from luxury goods, high transaction values, things like cars, but also that everyday e-commerce, particularly software and things like that, is really coming into play.
So the demand is kind of right across the board at the moment.
And the Ethereum Foundation just launched clear signing to combat crypto heist.
How do you feel about the overall state of DeFi security after the hacks that we saw in April?
The clear signing initiative from the Ethereum Foundation is a really important one, and we worked very closely with them.
We partner with about 700 different wallets right across all different ecosystems, but a lot of them support Ethereum as a network, and the ability for an end user to have trust in that transaction is really, really important.
This quarter.
We have seen DeFi hacks and all sorts of issues, probably more than ever.
I think as the use of AI by bad actors has kind of enabled that cost almost to go to zero to hack something, so security is just super, super important right now.
And what it does is it gives end users more confidence so they know when they're signing a transaction who the other counterparty is, and they know that that transaction is secure.
And as we, as we explore this more, that's just going to be super important.
I want to expand more on the stablecoin infrastructure.
How are big banks and firms interacting with blockchain?
We have seen over the last year the number of inquiries and the number of interests from big banks going through the roof.
Partly that's driven by this regulatory clarity that we see, and they're looking at it from all sorts of different use cases.
How do they make their back end infrastructure more efficient?
How do they move money across border more effectively, faster, cheaper, better settlements?
How do they manage more FX and gradually we're also then starting to see that come into these consumer use cases.
How do you enable an everyday user to make a payment, uh, to remit funds across the world that ultimately the speed and the cost of these transactions is going really very, very low compared to some of the old financial infrastructure, and I think that's what's driving a lot of interest.
Just last question, the Clarity Act advancing out of the Senate Banking Committee yesterday.
How does the impact of clarity, what is it on the industry?
You know, I think this is probably one of the most important moments for the industry of 2026 as we see new use cases and the ability for institutions to just have much more confidence in what they're doing with this as a technology.
It's giving boards, it's giving executive teams, and it's ultimately giving those people the ability to say, yes, this is something we should do.
Great.
Jess Hallgrave, thank you so much for joining us, CEO of Wallet Connect.
It's great to have you with us this morning.
